Microsoft Sues AT&T User For Pirating Windows 7

The fight against piracy is nothing new for Microsoft, with the software titan devising new ways to prevent unauthorized copies of its software solutions. And now we have another case.

An interesting case, where the company located the IP address of a user that illegally installed and activated copies of Windows 7 and Office 2010 on his computer — using an AT&T connection to activate the two products.

The company explains that its cyber forensics group managed to find his IP address.

At this point in time, it is not exactly clear whether AT&T actually helped Microsoft in doing so.

But as this report reveals, the court documents part of the lawsuit filed at the federal court in Washington confirm that the user tried to activate numerous copies of software, and the company recorded several activation requests from IP address 76.245.7.147.

A simple lookup reveals the location to be somewhere in Illinois.

So what is to become of the user in question?

While complete details are still incoming, there is a certain chance that the user behind this case faces a large fine, or possibly a prison sentence, depending on how many pirated licenses were actually used in these activation attempts.